By Stewart M. Powell

Updated 10:16 pm, Friday, October 18, 2013

WASHINGTON - Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is amending his financial disclosure report to the Senate to reflect a $75,000 debt that is owed him by a college roommate who joined him in investing in a Caribbean-based holding company in 1998, spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said Friday.

Cruz's staff described the Houston Republican's actions following a report by Time magazine's Swampland online blog that described the senator's dormant business investment.

Cruz invested $6,000 to co-found a Jamaica-based investment firm with his former college roommate at Princeton and Harvard law school, Jamaican Rhodes scholar David Panton.

Cruz and Panton were debate team partners as well as roommates.

The Cruz investment grew to be worth $100,000 - with $25,000 paid to Cruz earlier and $75,000 in a promissory note still owed him after he sold his interest, Frazier said. Cruz has not had any dealings with the firm or its successors for at least a decade, Frazier said.

He said the long-forgotten promissory note was inadvertently not reported on his financial disclosure report to the Senate during his 2012 campaign, but it was reflected on the latest submission.

Cruz has made arrangements to submit an amended disclosure report to reflect the financial interest, Frazier said.

Cruz told Time on Thursday that amendments to financial disclosure reports are common in the Senate.

"There is a routine back and forth with the staff with whom you file the report where they make inquiries," Cruz told the magazine.

Cruz told the magazine there had been "an inadvertent omission" of the promissory note from earlier financial disclosure filings that had been corrected after a conversation with Panton.

The Time report was "much ado about nothing," focusing on a 15-year-old business venture that Cruz "entirely divested more than a decade ago," Frazier said.

"Upon divesting from the venture in early 2003, the senator received a partial payment and also a promissory note from his business partner and college roommate," Frazier said. "That promissory note - on which this entire (Time) article is based - is technically still owed (and thus was voluntarily disclosed), but it has never been paid and Sen. Cruz has never attempted to collect on it."